← Culture Apothecary with Alex Clark
Culture Apothecary with Alex Clark
Why You’re Still Snoring, Air Purifier Myths, & How To Fix Your Air Quality | @jasprco
01:09:59
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- [00:00]
A
If you go into a nursery, just about anyone's house, it stinks like rule of thumb if it smells like it is and if it's, it's bacteria. Mom is trying to do everything to keep your little baby healthy and happy. And your baby is spending 16 or 18 hours a day in a little box breathing in poop particles all day, all night. With the bacteria levels off the chart, it's the only thing that's keeping us alive right now. If there was no air, we wouldn't be recording anymore. So we just take it for granted. And not all air is equal air. Air has nature intended. It was perfect, but we've been it up for a long time.
- [00:54]
B
Today's guest says we're living in slow motion disaster zones inside our own homes and we don't even know it. He's walked into the aftermath of wildfires, floods and toxic mold outbreaks. He's seen people lose their health and sometimes their minds from what was floating invisibly in the air. And after years in disaster remediation, he realized something shocking. Industrial grade air scrubbers were saving buildings. But nobody had ever thought that that power should go into the average home until now. Mike Feldstein is the founder Jasper, a next gen air scrubbing system built with hospital grade tech. Not just a purifier, but the kind of heavy duty machine used in disaster zones. Now reimagined for your bedroom or your baby nursery or your kitchen. He's also. You're going to love this. The founder of the Kindling Academy. What might just be the healthiest school in America right in Austin, Texas, with clean air as one of its pillars. You're going to flip. Hearing him talk about what they're doing in this school. It is so unreal. In this episode we talk about why fragrance is the new secondhand smoke. The item in your baby's nursery that you have never thought twice about that is making it very difficult for them to breathe. How indoor air could be fueling anxiety, brain fog, tantrums and even poor sleep. And why clean air might just be the missing link in your skincare routine and your sanity. If you've ever felt tired, wired, foggy, anxious, or just off in your own home, this conversation might explain why. Watch this episode on the real Alex Clark YouTube channel or culture Apothecary on Spotify. Pause though, before we get started. Right here, leave a five star review saying which episode is your favorite? Please welcome the founder of Jasper, Mike Feldstein to Culture Apothecary. You actually come from the world of natural disasters, Wildfires, floods, mold. What did you see that made you realize that most families are really living in slow motion disaster zones inside their own homes?
- [02:49]
A
I did start doing disaster work. So floods, fires, hurricanes, earthquakes, wherever was the biggest natural disaster in North America. That's where I was going. So when you restore a home that's been damaged or affected by wildfire smoke, you start by testing it before cleaning it. And cleaning it means cleaning all the surfaces, removing everything that's contaminated, and scrubbing the air deeply. And then you test the air at the end before the family can safely move back home. So after going to disasters and I had all my fancy air quality testing gadgets and moved back home, I started to test my home and friends homes and family homes. It turns out nobody really had good air at all. And in these wildfire zones, you don't really see this. When you see a big wildfire, you see the devastation. They talk about insurance and the financial loss. Mostly what they don't tell you about is that pediatricians and pulmonologists and doctors are slammed at capacity. So I was able to see very firsthand how sick people were after disasters. And then myself personally, I got super heavy metal poisoned. I was breathing in mold. I was getting pretty sick every time I'd go to a disaster area. And I was wearing protection gear in people's homes, but it was just in the ambient outdoor air that was impacting me so much. So it was really through the disaster zones and then testing and then realizing, whoa, people are sick.
- [04:12]
B
So that's what you were doing. You were working for a company that would test people's homes to see, like, how bad things were?
- [04:16]
A
Well, we were doing the cleanup. We were the ones who'd actually come in and fix everything. But we would also have to do our own testing to make sure we did a good job. So a normal testing company is coming in when it's like they're generally concerned. We were coming in when there was a wildfire or a flood or a hurricane after significant natural disasters. And it was so clear how everybody felt after disaster. Everybody was, everything was exasperated. Your asthma, your allergies, your respiratory rate, skin stuff. Any health issues that you had were like 10x because the amount of stress on your body. So then I put an air scrubber, a big, ugly, but super effective air scrubber in my home. And everybody would come in and comment on the mountain. Fresh, clean, crisp air. But my wife really likes design, and she's like, that thing is hideous. That thing needs to get out of My house. So I just realized, like, you know, really we'd go and clean up these homes after a fire, and then it's la. And six months later, the smoke's back again. So what were we really accomplishing? We'd clean it once, and then six months later, it's smokey again. So it was very clear that we have an indoor air quality problem, period. It's not just after disasters. Our homes are off gassing like crazy. So as my air awareness was growing, I saw how many people were getting sick from it. And that was just like, this is the mission, the disaster cleaning work. I call it sad money because you do all this work and then the home is contaminated again. So I wanted to move into more of a proactive space and less reactive, but it was just, yeah, I never in a million years would have thought I would be doing this.
- [05:47]
B
So what was one of the worst, you know, craziest air quality disasters that you've ever walked into?
- [05:53]
A
Fort McMurray, Alberta. Northern Alberta was the biggest fire in Canadian history. And in 2016, 100,000 people in the city and the entire city got evacuated for a month. So it wasn't like la, where they evacuated some areas. The entire city got evacuated. They shut down the town for a month. And this was interesting because 2 or 3,000 homes burnt down, but all 25,000 homes were smoke damaged. So usually when you think about a. A fire, you imagine like a kitchen fire, like the home on fire. These homes were a few miles from the closest flames, and even they were just completely contaminated and smoke drenched. So that was the worst one by far because of how the stress levels were so high, everybody was so sick, and no one was prepared for that because there's really no protocol for citywide smoke damage.
- [06:44]
B
Right.
- [06:44]
A
So we were kind of figuring it out on the fly, you know, first you go in and decontaminate and retest. Nope, still contaminated. Throw out the carpets. Still contaminated. Change the insulation. Still contaminated. And what happened was it was actually a family. We cleaned the home. Home. They moved out. We tested the air. All good. A week later, I got a call. Their baby was in the hospital. Went back to the home, tested it, contaminated again. I'm like, oh. So I called the insurance company, like, hey, we have a mutual client whose baby's in the hospital. I think that they should move out of the house. They should stay at a hotel out of town. Let's wait. Because the outdoor air after a wildfire can be contaminated for six months or more. It's in the soil. It's in the water, it's in all the other homes as they're being cleaned up. So that's what I suggested. And the insurance basically said, no chance. Basically like, you're done. They signed off, we're paying you, it's done. I'm like, oh, this sucks their baby sick. We're getting paid. This feels wrong. And somehow I feel like I'm a part of the problem. So like, what can we do about it? So we brought our, we brought four large commercial air scrubbing units back into their home and within a few hours the air was fine so they could move home. They were loud, they were ugly, but the air was, the air was clean. Baby could move home, they could breathe again. And this kept happening. So people kept getting sick after their homes were cleared and no one really realized that it was a regional citywide area. So this is like the entire city contaminated. And that was really the genesis of creating Jasper in the first place because I realized, oh wow, like we leave and then the home gets contaminated again. So what we need, and when I compared, like, you know, we have big ugly machines and that stuff you see at best buy, Walmart, Home Depot, Amazon, air purifiers, they're, they're cute little toys.
- [08:29]
B
They're toys.
- [08:30]
A
So they're called air purifiers. That name is accurate. They're designed to purify your air, maybe 10 or 20%. They're not designed to scrub your air. And for the contamination level in people's homes, they needed something much bigger. So that was my last wildfire ever. That's when I kind of hung up my hat in 2016, 2017, and I'm like, we need to develop a commercial grade air scrubber that's also quiet and also pretty because if it doesn't look good, nobody will use it. So that big moment just came from restoring a home. I thought we were done. Baby's still sick. We have a problem to solve. Insurance isn't going to solve it and there's going to be fire again six months next year. So like people need a proactive solution that lives in their home all the time. But yeah, for McMurray, Alberta, by far was the worst fire I've ever seen.
- [09:13]
B
So I mean, what does that tell you about how they've handled the fires in L. A? Like what do people wanting to move back into their homes and everything need to know?
- [09:22]
A
A question I get often I was especially getting it early in the year is like, should I leave? Should I move out?
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B
Yeah, like what would you do if you were someone that lived there?
- [09:28]
A
I wouldn't have lived there in the first place. But if I did live there saying it's a lot of pollution, it's a lot of noise, it's a lot of traffic. So I went there after the fire, test a bunch of homes and check things out and it really varied, you know, depending on the way the wind was blowing. Was your power on? Were you filtering your air? It was a wide range of things. But the thing is it's not just regular wildfire smoke. We're not just talking trees here. When thousands of homes burn and cars, think about this. If you had like 5000 Teslas that burnt with their lithium batteries, yeah, that's what's unprecedented. That's why I don't even feel like anyone can give a really informed opinion. We don't have experience being like what happens when you burn 10,000 Teslas and 20,000 cars and every can of paint and everything in that home, all, everything toxic in everybody's home was in that toxic cloud of smoke. So we really don't know.
- [10:16]
B
And in the beaches now, the sand.
- [10:18]
A
The beaches, the soil, the water, all of it. And when they like test, are they testing for everything? Everything is kind of an infinite rabbit hole to go down. A lot of people I know who are testing their blood work before every month, like people who are really on top of their health and biohacking and stuff, the heavy metals and the mold counts and their blood work after the fires was just off the charts. So the question is, is this back to normal after six months or is it still contaminated after a year? I'm going to go back January of 2026 and do a one year anniversary tour of L A and test everyone's home and we're going to test soil and test water and go back because that's how long it could take. The one thing that L A does have going for it, it's on the coast and the greatest filter of all time, like God's air purifier is the ocean, is the nature, it's the wind, it's the trees, it's the sun. That is the real air filter. Like it's as great as Jasper is. The real oil filter is nature. That's what's been doing it this whole time. So the fact that they're on the coast with the breeze pulling it out with the ocean, with nature, I think that's going to really help them.
- [11:18]
B
So people should have an air scrubber in their home or a few, like one in Each room, right? Ideally.
- [11:24]
A
Ideally, yes.
- [11:25]
B
Okay, ideally, but definitely if you can only afford one, then it would be like your main living area, that you're bedroom. Oh really?
- [11:31]
A
By far.
- [11:32]
B
Okay, wait, so I'm wrong on this. So why would, if you could only do one air scrubber in your home, why would it be best in your bedroom as opposed to like your living room or kitchen?
- [11:40]
A
Because that's healing time at night. Let's say you spend a third of your life in your bedroom. Like pretty much that's where you're going to be every night. And I reframed sleep to healing time. I found that the word sleep gave me like a dormant negative connotation. I don't want to go to sleep, I don't want to turn the lights off, like shut down. But healing time, like when you're sick, you go to bed, you're like, I hope I feel better in the morning. Cuz all the healing happens at night. Your muscles, your memories consolidate, like all the good healing, your batteries recharge and most people are breathing in mold and pollen and dust, all the stuff. And your indoor air is five to ten times dirtier than your outdoor air. So if you can really turn your bedroom from a sick space to a clean air sanctuary, a sleep sanctuary, all of a sudden you're healing at night is amazing. And then you can go into the world and handle a little bit more stress and toxins and mold and drive by a construction site. You can take a little bit in small doses. It's that 24 hour beat down all the time. So by far the most important place to have it is in your bedroom. Also, because the bedroom is a confined space, you can get the air in your bedroom 30 or 40 times cleaner than the ambient air, which is life changing.
- [12:46]
B
Now I turn my Jasper off when I leave for the day when I'm not there.
- [12:50]
A
Oh no, no.
- [12:52]
B
See, I need the steps on what I'm doing. So I keep it, I turn it on always, like when I'm going to bed and so it's running all night and then I turn it off when I wake up in the morning.
- [13:01]
A
You have two?
- [13:01]
B
Yeah, I have one in my living room kitchen area and one in my bedroom.
- [13:04]
A
Okay, so living room kitchen area. That one should be on smart mode. So if you're cooking and cleaning, it will automatically adjust to whatever's going on.
- [13:10]
B
You shouldn't be turning it off and.
- [13:11]
A
On when you're home and not home, never.
- [13:13]
B
Oh hey.
- [13:15]
A
And that's a sign for us because you're not the only one that said that we need to be a lot more clear in our, in our education. Maybe we'll use this segment right now and we'll put it in our emails forever. So the one in your bedroom, ideally it's on fan speed 3. 3.
- [13:29]
B
Okay.
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A
If you love silence, you don't have to. 91% of our customers actually prefer pink noise or white noise in their room.
- [13:35]
B
I love pink noise.
- [13:37]
A
So pink noise is what Jasper gives off.
- [13:39]
B
That's cute. Okay.
- [13:39]
A
Yeah. And pink noise is better for sleep than white noise. So a lot of people, if they use those sleep apps and Spotify playlist, they actually use pink noise. It's proven to be more effective than white noise for sleep. So Jasper is going to put make the air in your room a lot cleaner. So you want Fan Speed 3. And then when I travel I turn mine on full speed. All of them.
- [13:57]
B
Like when you're not home. Yeah.
- [13:59]
A
So it's scrubbing my air. Think about this outside. The the reason that the indoor air is five to ten times dirtier than outside and the air is cleaner outside is cuz there's wind. Wind is like the river. And if you think about a waterfall or a river flowing and streaming, it's clean because it's moving. You need to be moving to be clean. Everything should be moving. Always. When you see a stagnant pond, that's when you get the algae, the bacteria. Like still pond, dirty water, moving water clean in your home, if you're not circulating that air and even if you are, your, your home becomes a pond. And that's why people get sick in their homes. Because you have the VOCs and the mold and all the stuff and then it's stagnant. So when I leave, my Jasper is on full speed. Cuz the noise doesn't bother you, it doesn't use very much energy. And then when I come home, like often people go on vacation for a week or two, go out for work, come home and there's that little bit of a smell when they move back home that's called the stuck effect because that home has just been trapped. Their bodies aren't moving through it. Doors aren't opening, windows aren't moving, showers aren't on, vents aren't on. So your Jasper should never turn off air. Doesn't sleep.
- [15:00]
B
I had no idea. So I'm so glad that we had this conversation. I will say this, which I think is so fun. So any time that I'm getting hair and makeup done or something like that near my Jasper, when My hair girl is like spraying hairspray and stuff. I, it'll kick on and it'll turn red and it, it knows immediately and sometimes nothing will be going on but my dog will walk past and all of a sudden it'll turn red and I'm like, I bet my dog just farted something like that that I don't even know because I'm like why is it going off right now? But those things are incredibly smart.
- [15:33]
A
So Jasper is designed to be like Jasper has a company, we're an air education company who happened to also make air, an air scrubber. So it's designed for air awareness. So people realize, oh whoa, my incense is setting it off, my candles, my cleaning products. If you switch to better cleaner, healthier cleaning products, it won't go red.
- [15:50]
B
Yep.
- [15:51]
A
So it becomes like a detection system. If you have anything that's toxic in your home environment, it will detect it. Not everything, but a lot of things. It will pick up on it and then it lets you realize if it's turning it red, it might allow it gives people a chance. Maybe I should use different products.
- [16:07]
B
Okay, so here's something else that I had to tell you about. So the other day I had a beeswax candle burning in my room. My Jasper is on in there. And then I had a, it was a cleaner but still soy candle which is not completely non toxic burning in my living room area with my other Jasper. The Jasper in my room was green the entire time with that beeswax candle. It never thought that there was anything bad in the air. But immediately my Jasper went red trying to clean the air with the soy.
- [16:39]
A
Candle, shout out to the bees.
- [16:41]
B
So that was just really telling to me. One, that beeswax is amazing but like it, it really does notice like that and differentiate.
- [16:46]
A
When I was developing it I was using all these fancy air sensors like the one I have here because I needed the sensor to be good. If it doesn't show you what's in the air, like why, why are we hiding that information? Most air purifiers, they don't show you because they don't do anything. If they showed you the air, you'd realize that they don't work. So it's really designed to educate and show you things. If you raise your own air awareness, you all of a sudden are able to kind of navigate the world on your own. And I know you're pretty deep down your non toxic journey and the deeper you go, the more you start picking up on scents and odors and Ubers. And Airbnb and hotels and environments start triggering things. So I always tell people there is one bad thing about getting a Jasper. It might make you an Air snob.
- [17:26]
B
I love that. That should be the title of this episode. Become an Air SN. Your primary care doctor is testing what, like 20 biomarkers? That's adorable. At Jevity, they test over 90. That's not a blood panel, that's a Netflix documentary about your own body. They're checking everything. Nutrients, hormones, inflammation, liver function, thyroid, basically almost everything except nose hair count. And I bet that's coming soon. Then Jevity created a personalized plan for you based on actual data from your blood work, not vibes. You will get custom supplements for your body, a personalized healthcare team itself. Incredible. 40 off prescriptions if you need them, and access to functional medicine experts who won't gaslight you about your symptoms. All of this for just $129 a month. That's less than your self care budget that you spend on oat milk, lattes and a stress ball shaped like a mushroom. Go to God.com use code Alex to skip the wait list and save 20 off your first month. That's go.com code Alex to skip the wait list AND save 20 off your first month. I went on this fall picnic with my best friend and her four little kids last time I visited, which first of all is basically like trying to picnic with a traveling circus. One point the three year old tried to share an acorn with me by shoving it into my mouth like it was a truffle. I'm still recovering, but the only thing that kept me sane and the kids from Full on Mutiny were the Vandy crisps I brought. I'm being funny. It's never hard to hang out with her kids, but it kind of is when they eat my vanity crisps. These chips are unreal. Just three ingredients. Heirloom potatoes, sea salt, 100 grass fed beef tallow, no seed oils, no weird aftertaste, no regret. You know how most chips leave you feeling bloated and low key, wondering if you need a cleanse? Not these vanity crisps actually satisfy you. The tallow makes them crazy nutrient dense so you're not reaching for a fifth bag in a fog of shame. Plus I swear her kids were calmer after eating them. I'm not saying Vandy chips parented the children, but like they helped. Probably has to do with the healthy fat of beef tallow. Try French onion. The flavor profile is truly impressive. Go to vandycrisps.com use code Alex Clark for 25 off your first order. That's vandycrisp.com code Alex Clark for 25%. By the way, you can also grab a bag at your local sprouts. Now you started noticing how these industrial air scrubbers were doing such amazing things for buildings. Why were you the first person to think of this for more residential spaces?
- [19:47]
A
Well, I think most other companies that exist, they sell thousands of products. Like, if they sell water filters, they sell diffusers. They sell thousands of things. And we only do one thing. So it was, I think I'm the first one who got into the air cleaning space, who came from a disastrous background. So, you know, I was the mold man. So I was trying to create, I guess once a mold man, always a mold man. I was trying to create a machine that was up to the standard of what I was using on the job site. Whereas a lot of the other companies that exist, they were just trying to create something. Checklist. Amazon, $99. Put it in the corner. Great. I'm cleaning my air. They make kettles and light bulbs and everything. So who really cared? Thousands of employees. Nobody was really paying attention and testing things. So I just think because of me, coming from that disaster space gave me a different perspective into things. Like, you know, SUVs only came into the market in, like the late 80s, early 90s, and now over 50% of cars sold in America are SUVs. And what happened was they basically took military trucks and made them suitable to a family. They took big, ugly industrial trucks. So Jasper is like the Yukon Denali of air filters. So there was little cars and big ugly trucks. You're like, I want something that's big, that takes my kids, takes my stuff, look good while doing it, drive safe. And that's kind of just, you know, it takes a different perspective to create a different kind of product.
- [21:05]
B
And does the machine itself last a very, very long time? All you do is replace the filters.
- [21:09]
A
Designed to last 25 years.
- [21:10]
B
Cool. Yeah, they're incredible and they are really beautiful. I think that's super important. And you really don't even notice it. Like in your house, like, it just blends in with all your decor. You've talked about how we are very educated on filtering water, and everybody knows that filtering water is extremely important. Important. Why do you think water got the spotlight first? And air is still invisible in the public's mind. That that is also something that we should be purifying.
- [21:34]
A
Great question. So I'm going to say water and food, really, when people think about health, they think about diet and exercise and then that next thing is, is water. And let's look at supplements for example. I'm going to give you a long winded answer here. Supplements, supplementary. It's supposed to be to supplement the primary things that you're doing. And with food and water, the fact that you can taste it helps. Your first breath is the first thing you do when you're born. It's the last thing you do when you die. You do it all night long, when you sleep, even when you're not conscious. So it's so vital to our existence here. Like you can go three weeks without food, three days without water and only three minutes without air. So I think because it's so omnipresent, like we live in air, we what water is to fish, air is to people because we live in it, we take it for granted, we don't pay attention to it. That is the best reason I can think of. Like if you go into someone's home and they got like whether it's a dog or cooking, you go and you're within a few minutes, you don't smell it anymore because your body realizes like okay, we're not dying right now, it's a threat. But like it, it moves out of the focus and sort of into the background. And water has a business sort of got, you know, water filtration and, and the brita in the fridge like it was just in the business occasion of it came quicker. You know, you go to someone's office like 25 years ago you wouldn't go into an office and expect filtered water. Growing up as a kid we would drink from the tap.
- [22:58]
B
Right.
- [22:59]
A
And you didn't. Now we realize kind of tasted plasticky but I think it's really about that, that taste feedback that made us pay attention to it quicker and then really contaminated water that made people sick. But air is coming.
- [23:10]
B
What is the cost of the ignorance that people have around scrubbing their air and making their air as cle possible?
- [23:18]
A
There's kind of a spectrum here from like really, really dirty air to really, really clean air. Here in Arizona, I just left a four day health and wellness conference. Doctors and naturopaths and if there's anything that I think is like the most important thing to get out there, you go to the naturopath and they ask you hundreds of questions. You're filling out forms, they're asking you about your, your grandmother and your grandfather and all this secondary stuff. Long list of things and they didn't even ask you about the air that you're breathing. The same way that doctors aren't taught about nutrition. Natural pass. Even the holistic functional medicine docs, they're not taught about air. And to me, this is like the thing that I am here to shout from the rooftops because like the reviews that we get all day long is people have like life changing things. Their seasonal allergies are gone. So we did a study with Aura last year, oura ring, 150 people, we put Jaspers in their bedroom that have never filtered their air before. And in that one month, so they did one week, no Jasper, two weeks Jasper, one week no Jasper. So we could see the contrast. The Average person slept 25 minutes more per night with clean air in their bedroom. And 18 deeper, deeper sleep and increased HRV scores.
- [24:26]
B
Oh my gosh.
- [24:27]
A
Yeah. So people just stop having allergies. Like there was a guy who was clearing his throat for 20 years he's done every test under the sun, started scrubbing his hair, hasn't done it since. 30 of people who snore stop snoring. So right now, you know any snorers in your life?
- [24:46]
B
Of course.
- [24:48]
A
So get this, my sister Sarah and her husband, they're like 38, 39, he's been snoring for five years. They got a sleep divorce, they're no longer sharing bedroom. They had a Jasper. It was on smart mode. That wasn't doing it. I'm like, yo, you got to put it up to Fan Speed 3. That's where the life changing stuff happens. She comes in the next day he didn't snore, the next day he didn't snore again. So a month passed, still no snoring. They did a little road trip to San Antonio. No Jasper snored. That's probably my most heartwarming thing that happens now too. It's either kids who get asthma attacks all the time who pretty much stop having asthma attacks. But no, there's nothing better than when a couple who sleep divorced. Like, yeah, mid-30s. Like what is the cost of a sleep divorced relationship? What is that going to do for your family over time when mom and dad aren't sharing a room anymore?
- [25:33]
B
Serious damage.
- [25:34]
A
So we never got into the airspace to bring families back together and have mom and dad sharing a bed.
- [25:39]
B
Get a Jasper, save your marriage.
- [25:41]
A
Yeah, you said it. So like we live in this stuff. If you just imagined that you have two fish and one fish is living in filtered, pure, clean water all the time, and then the other fish, some bacteria mold, maybe a little Gas, some sprays and chemicals and dirty water. It's like, which fish is going to be more sick and die first? Probably the fish that lives in the dirty water. And we live in really dirty air now. So the biggest thing that's going to happen is sleep. And if your sleep is dialed in, your energy is better. They've done so many studies and tests on the chess players. The better the air quality, the better move they make. SAT scores, the cleaner the air, the better the test score. Now there's way more evidence coming out with Alzheimer's and dementia because like it's our fuel. It's the only thing that's keeping us alive right now. If there was no air, we wouldn't be recording anymore. So we just take it for granted. And not all air is equal air has nature intended. It was perfect, but we've been it up for a long time. That's why our logo is a tree. I hope that there's a world in a couple hundred years from now when we are living more harmoniously with nature again. But in the meantime, this is like a band aid solution. But yeah, if you can live in a clean environment, then all the other stuff that you're doing. And get this. Yo, I gotta tell you about this fragrances.
- [26:59]
B
I was just gonna say tell us about how fragrance is the new secondhand smoke.
- [27:03]
A
This is mind blowing. So your olfactory system is what allows you to smell, is your ability to sense smells. And when you, your body smells food, that's when you start creating saliva and your gut starts making the necessary enzymes and acids to break down the food. So the waste, that fragrances work. And the reason I call it second, secondhand smoke is because you don't have a choice. You're in the lobby of the building, you're in the hotel, all the bathrooms, everywhere you go. When you start paying attention, there is scent machines everywhere. And that little lemon fragrance, let me give you a little, little hint. There's no lemons in it. So what is it? It's chemicals. And what it's designed to do is it hijacks your ability to smell. It binds to your receptors in your nose that allow you to smell. And it says, no, only smell me that lemon, that vanilla. So they think it calms people down. But what it's, what it's doing. If you've hijacked your ability to smell, your body can't make the enzymes and the acids it needs to break down food have nutrient absorption. So what happens is they say 40 to 50% of that entire Process in your gut happens from your sense of smell, which is why a delicious meal gets you salivating. That saliva is. Has a process to your gut that gets your body ready to break down that specific food. When you hijack that process, your gut's not preparing for the food.
- [28:17]
B
Wait, so does that mean, like, kind of in a weird, indirect way, fragrance is making people fat?
- [28:22]
A
In a very direct way.
- [28:23]
B
Oh, my gosh.
- [28:24]
A
In a very direct way. And this is not rocket science. Like, this is everywhere. This is not like one particular study that proves this. We know the ability to smell impacts this process. If we're not smelling properly, our gut's not doing its thing. So, yeah, it's making you fat. And our food already, Our soil's already. Our food's already. So we already have a bad food source coming in. And even if it was good. I love this analogy. If you have really good organic food but you're not smelling properly, it's like pouring clean water in a dirty filter or dirty funnel. Clean water, dirty funnel, dirty water at the bottom.
- [28:56]
B
Okay, so you got to appeal to, like, everyone's husbands. Why do they need to stop wearing cologne?
- [29:01]
A
Also the deodorants. So like Bethany from Primally Pure, I'm going to hit her up and be.
- [29:06]
B
Like, yo, Bethany is very, very good friend and sponsor of the show.
- [29:09]
A
Oh, okay, Even better. So she already gives me a great deal for my family's products, and I'm intending to give it to everybody. We'll talk about the school after. But we're going to give everybody primarily pure. I just want to carry around, like, tons of Primally Pure in my bag at all times.
- [29:25]
B
Hand it out.
- [29:25]
A
So think about it. Me and my family got my little daughters there. We're sitting down at the coffee shop to have some breakfast person beside me or like four down rolls in with their speed Stick or their Old Spice. I'm like, oh, so now my little kids, their gut can't even produce the necessary enzymes to break down that eggs that they're about to have for breakfast. So that Old Spice is the secondhand smoke. And I didn't used to smell it. But as I've been cleaning up, you know, using better pans and using better oils and using better cleaning products and deodorants and filtering my air. I smell it from a mile away now.
- [29:58]
B
Oh, yeah, same.
- [29:59]
A
So you're wearing that stuff so all day long you're carrying that odor on you. So, yeah, stop wearing cologne, Stop wearing synthetic fragrances. If you want to use a little bit of essential Oils or something. Fine. But probably if you're smelling, you should maybe look into sauna and drinking water and like get your blood work done and start optimizing your health. Because humans aren't supposed to smell that bad most of the time. And if you keep covering it up with heavily synthetic, synthetic fragrances, you're making the problem worse, not better.
- [30:27]
B
What about air fresheners in the car?
- [30:29]
A
The worst. So one of my biggest missions here, you will know we've done our job if when you go to book your Uber, there's a little button that says scent free or hotels or Airbnb. I think it's like a basic right to go to get into a car and not breathe all that synthetic fragrance. So yeah, those little Christmas tree things are the absolute worst.
- [30:49]
B
Dude. We used to have to film the show a couple of years ago in like different Airbnbs and stuff like that. Just before I had like an official set built so we would rent an Airbnb to film. And there was this one that we went to. Simon, my, my videographer can attest to this. There was this one that we were going to and I loved how it looked. But they had every outlet of that house, had a plug in every outlet. It was the most scent filled home I've ever been into. It made me sick. And we would have to get there early, unplug everything, open every single door and window before my guests would arrive. And it was the most nauseating place to film. But it looked good on camera. But man, you do notice it and it makes you sick whenever you kind of take yourself out of that environment for a while and you start living scent free air Stop. I once flossed with a natural floss. It said eco friendly on the box. I believed it because I wanted to. But then I read the ingredients and realized it was made of polyester. I had been dragging a plastic rope through my gum line like I was flossing with a Barbie doll's hair. I asked myself, how many microplastics have I swallowed through my gums? And also, is that why I can taste electricity sometimes? Well, that's when I found zebrafloss. It's made of real silk, peppermint oil and xylitol. No polyester, no pfas, no forever chemicals that whisper to your nervous system in the middle of the night. I'm gonna get you. I keep a box in my drawer and one under my pillow for safety. Zebra floss is the only floss that I trust now. And if it disappears from shelves, I'LL assume that's not an accident. If you don't want your gums to absorb the same chemicals used in non stick frying pans and raincoats, go to yayzebra.com use code Alex for 10 off. That's yayzeber.com code Alex for 10 off. Look, the food system is collapsing, your hormones are in shambles and big pharma wants you tired, bloated and begging for Ozempic like it's liquid gold in a syringe. But guess what? You don't need a miracle drug. You need organs. That's right. Organs. Not from the black market. From cows. Not just any cows. Grass fed, pasture raised, American freedom cows who probably vote, drink raw milk and do CrossFit in the morning before journaling about ancestral trauma. I recommend Paleo Valley's grass fed organ complex. A beautiful unhinged blend of liver, heart and kidneys. A little supplement, all the great stuff that your great great grandfather ate raw while dragging a bison up a hill in the snow barefoot. But you, you just pop this little capsule and boom. Primal power unlocked. Your B12 through the roof. Your iron absorbed like a Roman God on trt. Your energy. Honestly, borderline illegal. Look, if you want to keep eating plant based protein bars made of sadness and cardboard, that's your business. But if you're ready to reclaim your birthright as a thriving human animal or just fully functioning human, it's time to join the liver cult. Go to paleo valley.com use code Alex for 15% off. That's paleov.com code Alex for 15% off. Your first order. Is the average baby nursery actually the most toxic room in the house?
- [33:49]
A
Yes, it is. So. And fun fact. When my baby was born four months ago, I brought a Jasper to the hospital and I tested the air and it was horrible. So we scrubbed the air. I. I say baby's first breath is more important than baby's first steps. So your baby comes into the world already breathing toxic contaminated air. So it starts in the birthing suite. By the way, if anybody's in Austin, we have a free service where we will bring a Jasper. We'll send a Jasper to the hospital for your birthing suite.
- [34:19]
B
What is going. You are like the fairy godmother of. Of air purifiers.
- [34:25]
A
We are. We need to do this because the, the most important thing is nothing to do with Jasper. If we can raise awareness, people can figure out everything for themselves. And that baby has no say over the environment that they're birthed into. They're trusting mom and dad to make these good decisions for them and mom and dad don't know.
- [34:46]
B
So why is it that important to have you come drop off a Jasper in somebody's hospital room when they're having.
- [34:51]
A
A baby so when that baby enters the world, they can breathe clean, fresh air as nature intended it not all this. Well, first of all, there's all the infection stuff from all the sick people.
- [35:00]
B
In the building, Lysol.
- [35:01]
A
Then they're using heavy, heavy cleaning products and chemicals. So that's just not cool. And by the way, you get to take it home too. So it's a gift for your baby's nursery, so you get to keep it. Lauren Bostic. I sent a Jasper to their birthing suite. Their baby was born in the same hospital as ours and when they turned it on, it was read to start and like it came down and instantly fixed the situation. So yeah, this is a thing that we're, I want to start giving them to more midwives for home births and all that. So then baby's born, normal situation into a toxic hospital environment or in your home with maybe your Glade plugins and your, your soy candles going on.
- [35:36]
B
Hopefully not if you're listening to this show, hopefully not.
- [35:38]
A
Not anymore.
- [35:39]
B
Right.
- [35:40]
A
Good work. So baby's nursery, here's some, I'll say what's wrong and then I'll say some tips. And I have a baby's nursery at home. Right now we're right in the thick of things. So with a nursery, typically you want to make it all pretty. So you're and often people don't prepare until right before baby's born. They're like seven months pregnant. They're like, ah, get the nursery ready. So you buy a new crib, it's going to off gas in there, all the stuff. You get a new cute rug, some wallpaper. You paint. So all these new materials are now off gassing in there, that's a problem. So what can you do about it? Number one, get that nursery ready like six months earlier, five months earlier. Either do a gender neutral or and like your baby doesn't care how pretty the nursery is, ask yourself what you're really doing this for. If you want to make it pretty though, get a comfy chair. I get it. Do your thing. If you can get a crib or the furniture in your baby's room secondhand off Facebook Marketplace or something or a hand me down, that's better because the off gassing's already happened. Yeah, it's new furniture that's you know, you bring in the new couch, new bed, and it's exhausting and venting out into the space. If you're not doing that, open the windows and close the door and let everything breathe as much as possible. And then the worst of all is the diaper pail. Ooh. Yeah. So think about this. If you go into a nursery, just about anyone's house, it stinks. Like, rule of thumb, if it smells like it is, and if it's. It's bacteria. So here you are. Mom is trying to do everything to keep your little baby healthy and happy. And your baby is spending 16 or 18 hours a day in a little box breathing in poop particles, charticles, all day, all night, with the bacteria levels off the chart.
- [37:18]
B
So you should really not have a diaper pill in your. In your baby's nursery. Like, you should take the diapers and throw them away outside.
- [37:25]
A
The best would be no diaper pail at all.
- [37:27]
B
Yeah.
- [37:27]
A
The second best would be diaper pail in another room that you clear out every single day. People always give me online for this story, but I'll say, I'll tell you anyway. With my first baby, I went through it. I experienced this firsthand. This was when Arya, she's five now, so she was like, six months. So four years ago or so, I'm going in there, and every day it's stinking. And, you know, I'm super air aware, and my wife has an amazing sense of smell, but I'm like, yo, Rach, this doesn't feel right. I don't know about. This is in, like, you know, I was at working, so she was home more of the time, and she was a labor and delivery nurse. So she's like. She's the baby whisperer. And I'm like, I don't know about this. Like, every time we go into the nursery, like, it's just nauseating. It smells like poop. And, you know, I'm able to test the air. I'm like, these bacteria levels are crazy. Can you potentially please take the diapers directly outside? And she was like, easy for you to say. You know, like, do you know how many things I'm juggling? First kid, mom, life. It's hard. The baby. The pail makes it super convenient. So it was kind of like a. A soft. No. I'm like, fine, let's run an experiment tonight. Let's put the diaper pail in our bedroom and shut the door. I'm sleeping on the couch tonight, so we can see. You can see what it feels like to sleep in this room, she's like, no, absolutely not. You know, once she kind of realized that she would never sleep with the diaper pail in your bedroom. So rite of passage, mom, dad, all of you, if your baby is using a diaper pail, I just say for one night, put it in your room and see how it feels. And adults are breathing about 15 to 20,000 times a day. Babies are breathing up to a hundred thousand times a day. The respiratory rate is way higher, their immune system is way lower. So little baby, small lungs, breathing that in all night long. Not okay. And I wish I could say just get a Jasper, but no, you just can't have poop in the nursery.
- [39:07]
B
You decided to create a school in Austin, Texas, and Pure Air is one of like the pillars of this school. But you are making this like the ultimate non toxic school. What are you doing even besides the air that is making this so extraordinary in Austin?
- [39:25]
A
So yeah, we bought an existing school. It's two minutes from my home, so it's right in the neighborhood. The building was going to be sold and based on its location and schools don't really make much money, it was for sure going to be knocked down and become a plaza or become a few homes. So first things first, we're like this, been there 25 years. We're like, you can't have a community without a school. The school must stay. And the reason, I'll tell you what we're doing in the school, but the reason that we're starting it is when my daughter Ari was two and a half, she was, she went to her first kind of like daycare school and she was coming home sick, always big boogies cough, runny nose. Then you know, Rachel was getting sick too, and that was a problem. And the doctors, you kind of look into it. I'm like, this doesn't seem right. And like that's totally normal. Like your baby should be chronically sick for five years until they get every infection known to man. It's, it's normal. Normal. It's part of the thing. Like hand on the heart, tap into the instincts. This does not feel true at all. And I'm like, we. She wasn't in bubble wrap the first two and a half years. We were traveling, we were on planes, we were in hotels. She wasn't getting sick all the time.
- [40:30]
B
Just at school, Just at school.
- [40:31]
A
As soon as she started going, so I did a little deep dive into the classroom and I would pick her up and I would go around and unplug the Glade plugins. And it's amazing. I would hide them a little bit more each time I would unplug them. And every day they were back in.
- [40:43]
B
That teacher was probably furious, I think.
- [40:45]
A
Was the cleaning company actually after hours. So they had windows that don't open, carpets that weren't clean. Harsh cleaning products. Bright, bright LED or fluorescent lights, like harsh lighting. So I'm like, if you try to design a prison, I mean, a school to be as unhealthy as possible, they nailed it 10 out of 10. So it was the most toxic environment ever. And I tried to put Jaspers into 50% of their classes and do some studies with them. And they were like they were not having it, which was weird. So I put her in a new school. We put Jaspers in the class, and she stopped getting sick. And then I found this study that was done in Finland a couple years ago where they did put air purifiers in half of the classes and half of the schools and did a big study. And the absentee rates dropped by 30% in teachers and students.
- [41:31]
B
Wow, that's unbelievable.
- [41:32]
A
People stop getting sick because, you know, we can get sick by surfaces and droplets, but most of the way we get sick is by breathing it in a small space. Think about it like, if there's incense or garbage, like you smell scents across the room, it fills the room very quickly. If you imagine like a bathtub and you put a couple red drops of food coloring in it, you realize the water is going to be like equally red within a few seconds. It diffuses and it spreads. Air is the exact same thing. So if one kid's coughing just because you're not in the line of fire, you're breathing it. One kid sneezes. If they're sick, they're breathing sick air all day long in that trapped little environment. And then since the 70s, they've been making buildings tighter and tighter and tighter, keep the cool air. And in the winter, in the summer, the warm air in the winter. So they're just choking on it. So once I had a sick kid myself and I heard about the Finland study. I'm like, this is just so not okay. And then the school came for sale, like it was a sign. And like, this is our time. And we tried a bunch of different schools and we just couldn't find either. It was like a full nature school where they were outside all the time. And that was awesome. But they didn't teach them anything. So I was like, you could have like a healthy structure with the worst educational philosophies or like a rigorous, like there was just we couldn't find the school for our kids. And the most important thing to me, you know, really it's the schools that largely raise our kids and not well. So we were looking into homeschooling and my wife is such a teacher at heart, but it was kind of a lonely endeavor. And Austin's very, very homeschool forward so you can find pods and you can find activities and there's things like that. So Jasper at its core I think it's, I'm using the word community school because it's like, it's kind of like homeschooling. But we're gonna do it with 60 kids and 30 families so we can, we can control the environment. So what are we doing? First of all, two Jaspers in every classroom, whole building water filtration. So they'll have clean water to wash their hands, they'll have filtered water for drinking. We'll have no toxic and harsh cleaning products whatsoever.
- [43:28]
B
What cleaning products are you going to use?
- [43:29]
A
We'll see.
- [43:30]
B
Okay.
- [43:30]
A
It could be some vinegar and water. Yeah, as of now I do, I do like Branch Basics, it's a pretty good product. There's some other products that I'm testing as well.
- [43:37]
B
Okay.
- [43:38]
A
But now we're going deeper down the rabbit hole to aggressively test because with a school you need really good cleaning products potentially a little bit more efficacious than what you would use at home. So now I'm on the hunt for the best non toxic cleaning products and I will report back. Okay, we're going to change all the lighting. There's really cool lighting companies now so they'll be all diffused lighting, no direct lighting and you can actually get lighting that matches the, the sun that day. The sun is not the same at 9:00am or noon or 2:00pm so the, the indoor lighting is going to mirror kind of the circadian rhythm throughout the day.
- [44:08]
B
Can you put that in your home?
- [44:10]
A
You can.
- [44:10]
B
What's the company?
- [44:11]
A
There's a few different companies who are doing it now. I'm, I'm the chief wellness officer. So my job is to make the healthiest environment ever. So everything that we're going to do at the school we're going to open source it and tell everybody what products we choose. So now I'm like really going down the rabbit hole.
- [44:25]
B
So you're going to create like almost like a curriculum, like build your own non toxic school so other people can take this and recreate it in their own School district.
- [44:33]
A
Yeah. And that's why the school is called Kindling Academy.
- [44:35]
B
Okay.
- [44:36]
A
And the company that owns Jasper, like my essence in the world is kindling. Kindling being those little sticks that you know if you have a spark or a small flame and you put a big log on you suffocate it, you kill it. Little bit of kindling and a little bit of air and let that, the kindling is gone, it's ash. And those big logs can burn bright. So the desire and intention of the school is so it's, we're running it as a not profit, not for profit. I don't believe in making money off kids or food. So the first thing that we're going to do is open source everything we do and we're going to pay teachers a lot more. Teachers are paid the least and it's horrible. They're basically like public servants and it's not cool. I don't want my kids teachers starving. So first of all I think healthy teachers is also really important. So also take care of your teachers health at home. So everything that we have in the school, the light, the water, the products, we're going to make sure that we're giving that to the teachers as much as possible in their home environment for free. Well, we have to.
- [45:29]
B
Okay, how do you do all this? Like what are you charging the kids to go?
- [45:32]
A
The question is as low as possible and as much as necessary. So we're going to put the profit and loss right on the website.
- [45:37]
B
Okay.
- [45:37]
A
There'll be no questions about the pricing. If anyone thinks it's like it's maybe 1700, maybe 2500, I don't know, as low as possible, as much as necessary. The point is we are going to, we're working with some doctors and scientists to document the whole process at the school. So we're going to be tracking absentee rates and symptoms because here's the deal.
- [45:56]
B
This is so cool.
- [45:57]
A
Public schools are funded on attendance. So here's our big North Star mission. Okay. So public schools are funded on attendance which is why they don't really want kids to travel or miss school. There's truancy laws and it's, it's whack. Anyone who has kids in public private schools that are kind of health forward, we have a program where we'll give Jaspers to the schools. So we're not just doing it at our school, we're providing clean air for as many schools as we can based on Finland getting them down 30 with just little air purifiers. I think we're going to get them down more than 50 or 60%. These kids aren't going to get sick anymore. They're going to be learning really well. Just build undeniable evidence. So if we have super healthy kids who are thriving, not only are other private schools going to be doing it, because that's going to be the standard, but if we can show the public schools, look, the attendance is 50% better. I love business because usually it's all kinds of whack because people, the incentives are misaligned. But if you can find ways to align the incentives, that's where the real magic happens. So if we can show the public schools that they can get their absentee rates down by 50% by having clean air, clean water, better lighting, non toxic product, opening the windows, the amount of money that they're trying to save on energy, they're tripping over dollars to save pennies or whatever you say, they're, they're penny pinching, penny wise, pound foolish. So the real North Star is if the schools see this, they across the country won't be able to not make healthy buildings and healthy schools because it will be the most profitable thing for them. So let's focus on what they care about, money. And if, if healthy kids and teachers mean healthy, bottom line, that's where the real magic's gonna happen.
- [47:28]
B
What kind of food are you gonna serve at this school?
- [47:29]
A
So we have a chef named Aaron Goldstein. His whole thing was make lunch healthy again. So he was going to school by school and revamping their whole food program. So it's all locally sourced, organic, healthy food. And then a big part of the school program is going to be teaching kids how to cook and teaching them about nutrition.
- [47:45]
B
Have you talked to Bobby Kennedy before? Or Cali means before. Oh my gosh. We have to get these ideas up the MAHA pipeline. This is so good.
- [47:53]
A
So then we're gonna have a supper club a couple times a week at the beginning where the parents can come in and learn how to cook and eat healthier. A lot of outdoor cooking too. And then the magic is going to happen when ideally we're gonna actually be able to create a program where the parents can pick up dinner at five o' clock or four at the end of the school day. I guess It'll be like 3:30 or 3 when you pick up your kids, you can go home with your glass Tupperware and have food ready to go or eat at the picnic tables at the school. Because literally I was shocked when we had our kids, 2pm to 10pm it's gone.
- [48:24]
B
Yeah.
- [48:25]
A
You go from I need to pick up the kid, come home, then you're cooking and cleaning and whatever. And then after dinner and you put them to bed, you're like, what just happened? You get no time with your kid, you get no time with your family. It's all gone. Where did it go? So the school is a community school in the truest form. We're not just taking in the kid, we're taking on the family.
- [48:40]
B
I'm just mind blown by all of the things that you're wanting to offer for this for such a low cost. Because I'm like, this sounds like a $25,000 tuition to me.
- [48:48]
A
At least as low as possible, as much as necessary.
- [48:50]
B
That is literally unbelievable. And then so cool.
- [48:53]
A
There's a 20 person sauna that we have. It's at Jasper's house now, but it's going to be at the school with some cold plunges. So that way when mom and dad drop their kids off at school, they can hit the sauna, take a cold plunge, connect with the other parents or do it at the end of the day because it's all about community. And like, you know, even if that the most selfish level, I just want this community for my family. And you can't have community by yourself. That's not how it works.
- [49:16]
B
Well, unfortunately for Turning Point, I guess this is my announcement that as soon as I get married and get knocked up, I will be moving to Austin. So sorry.
- [49:24]
A
Well, why don't we get some local. No, no. They'll be. And Kindling Academy is only going to have one school. We're not trying to create more schools across the country, but we are going to open source everything we do so.
- [49:34]
B
We can create our own.
- [49:35]
A
We're going to, we're going to document it, video it, we're documenting the whole process. So the hope is that more to teachers and moms, families can start their own little healthy schools. And, and for them, for us, it'll be a nonprofit. We're going to reinvest back into the school. But for others, we're going to show how the teachers can actually start their own schools, double or triple their income and have more of a say in the school system. So we're trying to give them the playbook of here's how you create a micro, healthy community school could be 20 kids, it could be 60 kids. But I think that's the perfect middle ground we need. But between homeschooling and public and private school is These like micro community schools.
- [50:14]
B
So I love exploring abandoned places, theme parks, hospitals, creepy houses that look like Ed Gein used to Airbnb them. You know, normal Saturday stuff. And last weekend I brushed up against some mysterious wall or curtain or ancient haunted fabric and boom. Rash on my leg. Like, should I call the cdc? Well, luckily I had active skin repair. It's this natural non toxic spray that uses hypochlorous acid. Y sounds intense, but it's actually what your body already produces to heal. It cleans the skin, it calms the irritation, reduces inflammation, and makes your skin not freak out when you decide to go ghost hunting in an abandoned roller rink. I use it for everything. Cut, scrapes, sunburns, breakouts, rashes, haunted carpets or something safe for all skin types. It doesn't sting and it actually works like medical grade works. By the way, if you like haunted places. Cannot recommend enough. If you also like scary movies, the movie it follows. Just a little fun fact. My favorite scary movie. One of them anyway. Ever. People love active skin repair because life happens. And when it does, you'll be glad you picked active skin repair instead of wondering how you're gonna FaceTime your dermatologist from the woods. Go to ActiveSkinRepair.com use code Alex for 20 off. That's ActiveSkinRepair.com code Alex for 20 off. Did you know that the average woman puts over 500 chemicals on her body before breakfast? That's not a conspiracy theory. That's science, baby. And I'm not talking about fluoride in the water. I'm talking about the crap in your drugstore shampoo that's turning your skin into a toxic waste site. Look at the back of your moisturizer. Half of those ingredients sound like rejected COVID variants. Cyclopenta, saloxane. That's not skin care. That's a spell from Harry Potter. That's why I use Adele Natural cosmetics. Made with actual ingredients that you can say out loud without summoning a demon. We're talking stuff like jojoba oil, shea butter, and not endocrine disruptors. It's clean, it's ethical, it doesn't make your face pe peel off in layers like a CIA disguise. And bonus, it won't make you smell like a chemical spill at that mall body wash store. So stop slathering poison on your face and pretending it's self care. Go to Adele Natural Cosmetics.com use promo code Alex for 25% off your first order. That's code Alex for 25% off your 1st order at Adele Natural Cosmetics.com. do you think that poor indoor air quality is one of the hidden drivers behind our mental health crisis?
- [52:32]
A
I do. You know, we took a moment to take a deep breath before this podcast. The breath matters so much. What do you do when someone's stressed out or freaking out or panic? Clean you go. Just take a breath. Just breathe. If you can calm your breath down, you can calm your mind down. If you can calm your mind down, you can calm your body down. And then the world is your oyster. If you can calm yourself down, you can figure it all out.
- [52:54]
B
Tell me about the science of Jasper. Like, why is Jasper a step above other air purifiers or air scrubbers out there?
- [53:03]
A
Well, air scrubbers are great, but they're loud and they're ugly and they're industrious air purifiers. So, you know, they're these little plastic things. The analogy to explain it best is their kettles. They're kettles trying to heat bathtubs or swimming pools. Imagine trying to heat a swimming pool with a kettle. It heats water, but you'd just be pouring it in slowly and the water would be cooling down faster than you could heat it up. It's too small to get the job done done. So Jasper is about five little air purifiers in one. So it's moving five times the air. And there is some super sneaky marketing out there. So what happens with most air purifiers, what they're doing is they say it covers a thousand square feet. What does covers mean? Does covers mean the air is 5% cleaner? 10 cleaner? 95 cleaner?
- [53:45]
B
Right.
- [53:46]
A
Square footage. Who cares about square footage? It's not a Roomba Air. Pure Air Cleaning doesn't care about square footage. Do you have 8 foot ceilings or 16 foot ceilings? That's twice as much air. You cannot go by square footage. So at its core, the number one most important thing by far is the size. Size matters. It moves way more air. Our filter inside is nine to ten times larger than the average filter. It's four and a half pounds. It's a big heavy duty thing. So, you know, it's made out of steel. Everything about it was industrial but pretty and aesthetic. And because it's steel and not plastic, it's designed to absorb light, not reflect light. So it looks really good in your home. It takes in the air 360 degrees, which means you can put it against the wall or the door or like in cor corners. Most people do put them in corners. If the air is Only coming in on one side or two sides. It needs to be a foot from every wall. Now it's in the middle of your room. Their sensors suck. If they have sensors at all, they don't even show you what's in the air. They have a little button called sleep mode. When you turn it on to turn off those bright annoying lights, it turns the fan speed all the way off. 91% of people that have Jaspers prefer pink noise or white noise so that you can't have it dark and working. What's up with that? It's like no one was even paying attention to what they were creating. And then the warranty sucks. They suck so bad. They have these one year warranties, they break. It's electronics. Things break. So the thing I'm like most proud of, people don't know this. Our first thousand customers were all doctors and dentists. We were Jasper Medical when we launched during COVID and Dentists in Ontario.
- [55:10]
B
Wait a minute, you guys have only been around since COVID Yeah. You are doing so many incredible things for such a new company. I literally thought that you've been around for like decades.
- [55:18]
A
I mean I have, yeah.
- [55:22]
B
This is incredible. Okay, so sorry. So. So doctors and dentists were using you first.
- [55:26]
A
So we were going to launch in summer of 2020 specifically for wildfire season. Covid. Covid happened. Covid happened first. And they mandated that every doctor in Ontario in Canada legally needed an air purifier or scrubber in every dental hygiene room to get back to business. Here's the kicker, based on its cleaning power was how many minutes between patients. So if they got a crappy little one from Walmart It'd be 45 or 50 minutes between patients. If they had a Jasper it was eight or nine minutes between patients. So from their perspective it would pay for itself in one day. So it was a need, not a want. They legally needed it. And then because of its performance, it got them back to business. Seeing patients quickly and then every single patient, it goes red in between every patient. So then the hygienist and the dentist started raving about it to their patients. Like the air in our office is cleaner than your home. Come back to the dentist. Come back to the dentist. They wanted to get their patients back so they started becoming our advocates to rave about their own hygiene at the practice. You know, we got our masks and our glove and our purell, but our air is super clean. Come in here, it's safe. The first Jasper like broke, you know, we were a new company, things break Sometimes. And they would refuse to work. So the dentist would call us, panicking that we need a Jasper now because the hygienists are refusing to come to work without Jasper in the room. Six months of that mom's in there now. She's been rave to when the dentist was raving about their own practice. Hey, my kid has asthma. Does Jasper sell these for the home? Dentist is like, I don't know, call Jasper. By the way. We had no E Commerce for the first three years. So for the first year and a half the only way you could buy a Jasper was to call me directly. Call me because I was like a blue collar mold man running service companies. So it said like request a free consultation. We were running it like a local service business.
- [57:02]
B
We were so cool.
- [57:03]
A
We were delivering by, by hand. By the way, in Austin, if anyone buys Jaspers, we hand deliver every single Jasper. So if you go online and buy it and you live in Austin, we come to your home, we deliver the Jasper, we test your air, we take the packaging away. Because if people have that air awareness moment, then they become, they become the sales force, right? They become our clean air missionaries, our air evangelists.
- [57:21]
B
Genius.
- [57:21]
A
And that's why the eccentric generosity that feels good works. Because when people are waking up to the importance of air, they tell everyone. So the, the dentist and the hygienist would rave about it. Mom's like, hey, my kid has asthma. Do they have these for the home? I get a call? Yes, sure, yeah. The original mission was for families during wildfires. It was never about dentists and doctors. And the dentists and doctors were only buying it for their business, for their marketing, for the optics, to make their staff happy and healthy. They didn't truly care when mom bought it, you know, she wasn't buying it to make money. She was investing in her kids health. All of a sudden she's like, my kid's not having asthma attacks. Or we'd be like, I don't know if this makes sense. This seem, I think it might be crazy, but my kid has ADHD and they're focusing all of a sudden. Could this be correlated? And there's just been a mounting wall of evidence of people who would wake up in the morning congested and sneezy. No more congestion, no more sneeze, no more boogies for the kid. I'm not getting sick anymore. So just. And like my heart is full. Like I could do this for free forever. So we stopped selling to doctors and dentists. We moved on to E commerce. I moved From Canada, Austin started just teaching people about air, and now here we are.
- [58:32]
B
People are spending thousands and thousands of dollars on skin products. What can you tell people about the correlation between air health and skin health?
- [58:41]
A
Oh, a lot. So I've actually been learning more about the Korean culture. Like, basically in Korea, spa essentially means exfoliation. You would like here we do saunas and cold plunge and stuff. You would never see that in Korea without exfoliation. If you look at your skin under a microscope, it's disgusting. And a shower does not do the trick because your skin is your filter. Your lungs and your skin are your true filters. So there's a few things here. Number one, the cleaner your air is, the less your skin is going to take on. Oxidative stress is going to make you wrinkle and age faster. And if you're getting less particulates in your skin, you're gonna have healthier skin and less wrinkles. So skin health is a big deal. But, yeah, that's the thing. Like, people are spending hundreds of dollars a month on supplements. I feel like naturopathy, which I go to a functional medicine doc, it's kind of quickly becoming like western medicine very quickly. But instead of pills, like pharma pills, it's like holistic pills, but they go in blood work, bunch of stuff. And then here's your 17 supplements. Like, whoa, whoa, whoa, whoa, whoa. How about a walk after dinner? How about a little sunlight? How about clean air, clean water?
- [59:44]
B
Right back to basics.
- [59:46]
A
The thing is, the incentives aren't aligned. So I'm at this medical conference that I'm at right now. I met a surgeon the other day. He does stem cell stuff. 3, $500 they charge. And he told me his cost was $5 on materials and a hundred on labor. I'm like, 3, 500? Don't you want to make it like 900 and make it, like, accessible to all? That's just not where they're wired. And he explained that surgery is where all the money's made. So he's like an allergist, too. So I went to allergy conferences being like, hey, guys, you have. People are coming in struggling from pollen allergies. There's a pollen removal machine that people can put into the rooms called Jasper. It's an air scrubber where they don't have to breathe pollen anymore. And. But their business is designed around you coming into their office every week for shots that don't even work. So it's that last thing they would ever want their patients to have is clean Air, clean air means almost no more allergies and a whole home water filtration system, which is a good idea. It's like seven to ten grand, right. So you know, this thing is, and, and we'll give people a really good deal at the end of the episode. Once you buy it once, it's the last air purifier air scrubber you ever need to buy. So filters are a little over a dollar a day. So for a little over a dollar a day you have clean air for life. And like a thousand dollar air purifier, expensive, but 2500 or 3000 for whole home filtered air, cheap.
- [61:00]
B
Now do you recommend people get like an air purifying system, I don't know, their AC units or something, I don't know. Home building.
- [61:05]
A
I tried to develop that first. Okay, the first two or three years. So between, between 2016 and 2020, that's when I developed Jasper. I traveled all over the world. Truthfully, I just kind of got a vision in 2017. That exact Jasper UC popped in. When people call me founder of Jasper, like I cringe because I'm like Jasper founded me more than I found Jasper. It just popped in. I'm like, we, that's, that's the thing we need. But we tried to make a whole home system first. Out of sight, out of mind, clean, elegant. It didn't work. They were loud, they were ugly. When your furnace wasn't running, it wasn't working. It didn't help for tenants and it was cleaning all your air equally and minimally. I want clean air in my baby's bedroom. I want clean air in my bedroom. When I move, I take it with me. So the H Vac thing is elegant. If someone's building like a 10 million dollar custom home, yes, you can get a fancy H Vac system and high performance air. But for anybody else it's just not practical and doesn't really work that good.
- [61:55]
B
If you could design the perfect clean air sanctuary home, what are three things that would be non negotiable?
- [62:01]
A
I just want to give some people some free tips that they could do immediately.
- [62:03]
B
Yeah, yeah.
- [62:04]
A
Because this kind of gets you to the same place. Okay, so a few tips, quick times. No shoes in the house. 95 of shoes have fecal matter on them and I haven't seen the test yet, but I bet you they all have glyphosate too. Like guaranteed, you're walking out there, you're bringing that in your house. In Canada, no one wore shoes inside, probably because of winter in Texas people walk right on in your home with their boots on. It's crazy. We have to keep making a larger and larger to please take off your shoes sign. And I think finally we cracked the code there. Your range hood above your stove, your range hood vent, it's the thing that you're using to cook, to vent it. When you cook high heat. And like even if you're using grass fed, grass finish, organic steak, good oils, there's something called pah, polycyclic aromatic hydrocarbons. It's cancer causing. It's the same thing we would test after wildfires that gets released like crazy when you're cooking indoors. So the cooking particulate, it's not just that the food itself is being spread, but there's all these other chemical byproducts that are being released and they're being embedded into your carpets, into your couches, into your clothing, everything that's porous. So when you cook, you want to use that vent, you want to use that range hood if weather permits it. Open your windows. You need ventilation when you're cooking.
- [63:11]
B
Okay.
- [63:11]
A
If you can use the back burner, it gets a lot more of the air. And then more than 50% of vents over stoves don't work. So here's a simple way to test it. Take a tissue, take a Kleenex, put your vent on, make sure it pulls it up. Often it doesn't. And then where is your vent venting? It should vent out of the house, but sometimes it vents into the cabinet above or to another room into like a. It just doesn't vent anywhere. So you want to make sure the vent is working, it exhausts outside and actually use it. So that's one big one. You need your home. If your home's not breathing, you're not breathing. Bathroom fans, as much as people think they're for poop smell, they're not. They're for humidity after showers. So I would recommend running your bathroom fan for about two hours after you shower. You can go to Home Depot and buy a little timer, hit the little two hour button, let it do its thing. I like when things don't require willpower. We only have so much of that. Same thing, tissue test. Make sure that bathroom fan is working and make sure it's venting outside. A lot of bathroom fans vent into the attic and then you get a big moldy attic. So when you shower, your towel absorbs a ton of water. If you're not venting that humidity out of your bathroom, of course you're going to have Mold and mildew and then better, better cleaning products for sure. Be careful with your candles, be careful with your cleaning products. I'm probably preaching to the choir because your audience is fairly aware now of better, you know, cleaning products and things like that. So be aware of the sources. Let your home breathe. Those are some of the most important things that you could be doing.
- [64:31]
B
If you could offer one remedy to heal a sick culture, physically, emotionally or spiritually, what would it be?
- [64:37]
A
Obviously air is top of mind breathing, paying attention to your breath and then pay attention to what you are breathing. But honestly for me it's community. I think the social isolation of technology and zoom. So like Jasper is not a remote company. It's in house and that's non negotiable. I will say community at large, but humans need humans in real life, in person. We need to touch and feel each other. We need to go for walks, we need to be with other people. We that we need community. We need friends. We need people to share the good times and the bad times with. We need to be collaborative with. Just working at home on your computer with your hunchback and your screen is not the way to go. We need fresh air and we need people.
- [65:13]
B
The two things that I have purchased as like fun extras like in my wellness journey that I think have made the most impactful difference. My red light therapy device and my Jasper. I mean I absolutely love the Jasper. You have a special discount for my listeners.
- [65:31]
A
I sure do. And it's all about air awareness, so. And I'll tell you one thing before I give you guys the best deal of all time. You can actually make a DIY air scrubber that's really good too for about 150 at Home Depot. So if Jasper is outside of a price point for you, I just don't want to see you go to buy a $99 or 299 or 499 machine that's just a cheap plastic box full of empty promises that does nothing. Yep, that's what we're trying to avoid here. So whether it's cracking the window, being mindful of your environment, you can make a DIY air filter if you Google Corsi Rosenthal box, A C or a K. Google will figure you out. Corsi Rosenthal box or DIY air purifier with a box fan. Those work really good too.
- [66:14]
B
Okay.
- [66:15]
A
The downside is they're loud and they're ugly and you're gonna have to spend a home a half a day duct taping some filters together. But at least you'll have a real air cleaning machine at home. Jasper was designed by a mold band with a wife who loves interior design. So it was. I think design and aesthetic is part of health and I think that's what your eyes take in. That's why we like uncluttered environments and aesthetic environments, because it calms us down. So we are making no focus groups. I made it for myself. And then whoever wants something that's pretty and has a lifetime warranty and all the good support, Jasper makes sense for you. So here's the deal. This podcast comes out today, which is the last couple days of October, which means Black Friday is in a month. Last year, and even before Black Friday, we sold out four months in advance. So people who are buying in the November were getting them in March.
- [67:00]
B
Whoa.
- [67:01]
A
So, first of all, thank you to everybody who believed in our in the mission and the product and clean air enough to wait. I am eternally grateful for your patience. So the deal for your audience is this. We're going to give your audience in your community early access to the Black Friday offer. So our Black Friday offer, it's like teach all year and then offer in Q4. So the Black Friday deal is $400 off.
- [67:24]
B
Nice.
- [67:25]
A
So instead of 11.99, Jaspers are 7.99. That's for as many as you want, whether it's one or two or five or whatever. So it's $400 off. But that special is only valid for a week from today. So the reason that we did this is because I realized when I think about all the purchases, like even the big health purchases I made, I bought them when they were on sale. Like I take action when the deal's in front of me. So it's like harmonizing the education with the offer, I think is the best thing you can do. So starting today for a week, forget it. Let's make it two weeks. Just in case anyone's busy and they don't hear it for a few days from two weeks from today. Podcast dropping day code Alex will be 400 off.
- [68:02]
B
Amazing.
- [68:03]
A
Jasper is J A S P R dot SEO. So Jasper code Alex will be 400 off. And then for eternity. You know, Black Friday is coming up, so if you want to get ahead and not wait for months, we're going to be in stock right now. So we'll ship it tomorrow. You'll get it in two days. If it's not undeniably life changing in the first 30 days, send it back to us.
- [68:22]
B
There's no way I noticed a difference in immediately.
- [68:26]
A
Well, you will immediately.
- [68:27]
B
Yeah. So I, I highly doubt that that's going to be happening now for those listening because, you know, podcasts like have a lifespan of a long time. So let's say someone's listening to this three months after this airs. What is the long term discount code?
- [68:41]
A
Alex? Stay $250 off forever.
- [68:43]
B
Okay, cool.
- [68:44]
A
So that'll be our Evergreen forever. So if someone doesn't hear it now, it'll still be $250 off, but for the first two weeks from today it'll be $400 off. So if anybody wants to try Jasper, try breathing clean air at home and feeling the difference and raising their air awareness. Maybe becoming an air snob. This is your sign that today is the day.
- [69:02]
B
Thank you so much, Mike. This is so fantastic.
- [69:05]
A
Thank you for having me, Alex, and keep up the great work.
- [69:10]
B
I said it. I'll say it again. My Jasper air scrubbers that I have in my kitchen, living room area, bedroom and my guest room office are some of the best wellness purchases that I have ever made. I know they can be pricey, but Mike is offering a hefty, hefty limited discount on these. Honestly, the Jasper air scrubber and my red light therapy devices like that is the best money that I have ever spent on something extra. It is so, so, so worth it for the health of your home and your family members. Please leave a five star review. If you love this episode, tell others why they should listen to Culture Apothecary. We post new episodes Mondays and Thursdays at 6pm Pacific, 9pm Eastern. I'm Alex Clark and this is Culture Apothecary.